


Kankri ==> Be Courageous

by twii2ted_8333335



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Humanstuck, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Sad with a Happy Ending, Sadstuck, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 15:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2737130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twii2ted_8333335/pseuds/twii2ted_8333335
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And there were days when she lingered in your arms a little too long to be a friendly hug. There were days when you caught her looking at you with a hopeful expression and gentle smile — it was those moments that made you want to spill out every emotion, every thought, every word you'd been holding back since the day you met her. </p>
<p>You held off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kankri ==> Be Courageous

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what half of this says. There's no prompt, no headcanon, nothing to guide me except a lack of sleep and a love of breaking Kankri's heart.
> 
> I also just discovered Kantula complications so there's that.

The first time you saw her was in fourth grade. She had just moved into town with her mother, a lawyer who you just barely remember helping your father win a lawsuit just a few months after moving in and just a week before giving birth to a little girl named Terezi. She grew up to be every bit as beautiful as her sister — but you're getting ahead of yourself. 

You didn't speak to Latula that first year of school you shared. She was new, small and still had a bit of baby fat in her cheeks and hands. You wanted to observe her as you did everyone else before you approached them. Your father always told you to be careful about offending both kids and adults, and how else would you know what would offend them if you didn't stay back and watch for a while first? 

You didn't see her much over the summer but once fifth grade started, you remember deciding you'd speak to her then. When you saw her though, slimmer than the year before, taller, with longer hair and a clearer face, you stayed in your shaded part of the playground and watched her climb around like "radical monkey," as she often exclaimed. 

She was the most beautiful girl you had ever seen, even though you were barely ten and your father said you'd find woman even prettier as you got older. 

You never did. The older you became, the older she became, and as she grew older she became more and more beautiful. Her hair grew longer and framed her cheeks, made them rounder. Her eyes, when not hidden behind her glasses, were a blue bright enough to shame the sky. Her skin was clear after ninth grade; her personality lively after tenth and by the beginning of eleventh you had finally spoken to her. You had become one of her closest friends. You knew her fears, her insecurities. You knew what would make her laugh and what would make her cry on a Christmas morning. You knew her as well as your younger brother knew Terezi, as well as your father knew Miss Pyrope at that point.

You knew you were absolutely head over heels for her. 

You knew you'd never say anything though. That was the point in becoming close to her, in being that friend that could hold her close when she needed comfort and indulge in her needs with a certain degree of interest. You were too afraid of what would happen if you took that extra step. You didn't want to risk losing her permanently. 

You spent three years in that mindset, friendzoning yourself for the sake of keeping her close. You stayed in that lane on the highway of life up until senior year when you realized that you could lose her after high school anyway if you didn't do anything. You would both go your separate ways, talk once a week or get together every so often to catch up. She would find somebody to love, and as happy as the thought made you, you wanted it to be you. You wanted to be the one to give her gifts, to take her on dates, to cuddle and watch movies on winter nights. You wanted to be the one who saw her walk down the aisle if this really was a love that would last like you thought it was. 

And there were days when she lingered in your arms a little too long to be a friendly hug. There were days when you caught her looking at you with a hopeful expression and gentle smile — it was those moments that made you want to spill out every emotion, every thought, every word you'd been holding back since the day you met her. 

You held off. These situations were delicate and had to be done properly. In other words, you were still too much of a coward to ask her out on the spot. You weren't a spur of the moment type of man. You required time for extensive planning and mental preparation; and you planned on asking her to prom. Surely that would show her just how much you cared. Prom was a time for friends and for couples. You could show her that you meant to go as a couple. Prom was months away all the same. Plenty of time for preparations. 

In the months you spent preparing your big reveal, Latula introduced you to another of "her kind," as she said. A gamer, a skater, a boy who had a few head problems but was much smarter than he gave even himself credit for. His name was Mituna Captor and he was a kind boy but he was tiring, to say the least. You quickly grew detached from him, wanting as little to do with his bad speech patterns and love of clinging. You hardly stayed near him unless Latula was with him too, and you only stayed because she asked you to. 

You were at least glad she seemed so content in his presence. If they were out by themselves, you knew she was in good hands. You just did not like the owner of those hands in the least bit. 

They did end up spending a lot of alone time together too, which was fine. She still spent many weekends with you, and nothing had changed. You didn't even feel all that lonely on days when you didn't go out with her. You had made a few friends of your own. Most notably Porrim, who gave you advice you imagined you mother giving you if you'd known her, and Cronus, who was almost twice as frustrating as Mituna but at least he knew the meaning of "look but don't touch."

By the time it would be acceptable to start asking out others for the dance, you felt confident and ready. You were going to ask out the girl you loved. You were going to finally work up the courage to tell her that you'd felt that way for years. You were going to turn your life into the dreams you wanted to come true. 

You were going to stand there, just a few feet away from her, as Mituna asks her out on a date. A legitimate boyfriend-girlfriend date. You were going to watch as the love of your life was quite literally taken from you because she very eagerly agreed to whatever it was Mituna had proposed they do. You felt the energy you'd previously had leave you; all that courage and confidence and hope drained out of you in the span of a few moments. 

You quietly crept back into the shadows of her life, wondering why you had bothered to begin with. You should have let her go long before high school started. You should have known that you would be nothing but a friend to her. You had acted far too late on your feelings and you paid the price. 

You humored her when she told you the news that afternoon as you both headed to your house for dinner and a movie. You pretended you didn't want to kiss and tell her that she should have been the one to ask her out on that date. You pretended that you weren't breaking on the inside hearing about how they'd been planning to make it official for nearly a week. You pretended to be truly happy to see your crush of years finally find somebody. 

You pretended and you knew she noticed but she said nothing. Not when you stayed on one end of the couch and she had to coax you into holding her. Not when you nearly burned dinner and your brother had to take over. Not even when you kissed her cheek just before she left. She simply gave you this look of pained regret and left. 

You didn't go to school the next day, claiming sickness. Cronus showed up around lunch time, forced you to eat which you were actually a little grateful for since you didn't realize you'd been hungry, and stayed in your room until well into the night. 

You called him a fool for skipping school, for shirking his homework duties, for not going back to his family. 

"Takes one ta knov-know one, Kanny." 

"That's Kan _kri_ , Cronus." 

He grinned at you. "There ya go. That's the guy I remember. Keep him here a v-while longer alright?" 

You gaped him, appalled. Was that all he wanted to hear? To hear your snark and quite possibly even rude comments directed onto him?

"You really are a fool."

His grin widened. "Yeah but I'm your fool. You're stuck v-with me, Kan, v-whether ya va-want me or not." 

And you bantered back and forth with him until he really needed to go home and your cheeks ached from the smiling you did. You blamed the fact that he'd found you were ticklish. 

When he left, your heart sank again, thinking of the events of that day, but Cronus had made that weight a little lighter. Perhaps you wouldn't ever truly move passed Latula but there was still hope. She was your friend. You could still be with her, and you had others who could ease your pain just as you did hers. 

The world would spin on, even if right now it was slowed to a stop.

**Author's Note:**

> How do I Latula guys.  
> How do I anyone.  
> This is so getting rewritten when I'm coherent again


End file.
